


Nicest Thing

by idlestories



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Driving, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining Arthur, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29663355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlestories/pseuds/idlestories
Summary: Arthur has been best friends with Merlin since they were eleven, and in love with him since they were sixteen and he realised what that was. Too afraid to risk the friendship, he's resigned himself to never telling him how he feels.Now, high school has just ended, it's their last summer together before university, and Arthur? Arthur is just trying not to think about it.Featuring: loneliness, pining, drunk Merlin, driving lessons, and more than a few poorly-executed teen movie clichés. Covers June-December the year they start university.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 41
Kudos: 107





	Nicest Thing

**Author's Note:**

> this took me forever to finish it was only supposed to be a dumb little driving lessons oneshot and it uhh spiralled. as you can see
> 
> title after the kate nash song because big in love with your best friend vibes
> 
> three things to note: 1) they swear a Lot in this because they're british teenage boys and also i think it's funny, so heads up for that, and 2) brits drive on the left, in right-hand drive and generally manual cars, so adjust your imagination accordingly. if you learned to drive an automatic you are not valid, i'm sorry. and 3) the yellow car towards the end looks like simon's car from the inbetweeners

Arthur’s hand ached, and he tried to rub the pain out of it as the invigilators began to collect the exam papers. A severe-looking woman snatched his up, and he smiled politely up at her, receiving only a suspicious glare in return. Leaning back, he stretched his arms out under the desk and recoiled as his fingers brushed against some ancient chewing gum. He tapped on the upper surface of the desk, which the removal of the exam paper had revealed to be a canvas of carved initials and ink splotches, and finished the last of his water, stomach growling at the poor substitute for breakfast. He’d hovered in the kitchen so long waiting for Uther to turn up that he’d ran out of time for it, in the end.

However much logic and experience told him that his father was never going to remember his last exam, he had always had trouble extinguishing the little spark of hope entirely. Maybe Uther would be home tomorrow. Sometimes the company liked to play at being benevolent overlords by letting them work from home on Fridays while they saved themselves the cost of the office coffee machines.

Fragments of frantically memorised historical argument floated through his head, still buzzing numbly along with his hand. He tilted his head back to look at the high ceiling of the sports hall. Something clicked unpleasantly in his neck. Nothing felt any different, even though he supposed everything suddenly was. A Levels over, school over. All of it.

Another invigilator drifted past and he sighed, sitting up straight. Automatically, he started looking for Merlin, guessing by where he thought the Es were seated. With little effort, he zeroed in on the mop of dark hair and the annoying tapping noise as Merlin beat a rhythm on the desk with his pen, looking around to see how soon they could leave. The final few papers were gathered in and serious nods exchanged, and the silence was on the verge of breaking anyway when the head examiner announced:

“That concludes this examination. You may leave the hall quietly. Please ensure you have all of your belongings.”

The hall breathed a sigh of relief in whispers and scraping chairs. Arthur stood and grabbed his pencil case, still watching Merlin as he ruined his hair even further, scratching his jaw and leaving a line of pen on his throat. He had lost his pencil case in November and not bothered to replace it, instead simply carrying around or borrowing several chewed pens. Arthur caught himself staring at the line of black ink against pale skin for a second before someone walked into him and he stumbled.

“Do you mind?” she said irritably, and Arthur snapped back into real time with a flush, realising he was holding the whole row up.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, almost tripping in his haste to get moving. The leg of the desk scraped against the floor, and Merlin looked around at the noise and caught his eye. He grinned and pointed to the door. Arthur nodded.

Slowly, they collected their bags from the back of the hall and spilled out into the sun, volume slowly increasing as they moved away from the doors. Arthur let out a breath and rubbed at his hand again where he stood off to one side. His history class smiled and waved as they passed him by. He watched as Merlin was embraced by the rest of his English class, laughing and comparing essay choices at top volume, in varying stages of despair and elation.

Arthur waited. He didn’t mind. Eventually, Merlin extracted himself, shouting something over his shoulder as he jogged up to Arthur.

“Freedom,” he announced in a truly horrible Braveheart sort of accent, practically bouncing with excitement and caffeine.

“Freedom,” Arthur agreed, watching with amusement as Merlin threw out his hands and tipped his head back to the sky, inhaling dramatically.

“The sweet, sweet taste of no more exams,” he said, eyes closed. He faced forward again and opened them to squint at Arthur. “So,” he began. Arthur’s heart sank. That sounded very much like a trying-to-persuade-Arthur-to-go-somewhere tone. A party. He could feel it coming. He braced himself. “When are we going to burn all our notes?” Merlin said instead. “What a bonfire that would –” Arthur opened his mouth and Merlin pointed at him. “If you say we might need them, I will throttle you,” he said. Arthur grinned.

“Could you even find your notes if you wanted to?” he said. “I’ve been in your bedroom.”

Merlin shot him the fingers and rifled in the front of his bag, coming up with a crumpled fiver and a handful of change, which he held out triumphantly. “Lunch?” he said.

“Lunch,” Arthur agreed, and let Merlin steer him to the car.

* * *

The radio echoed through the cafe as Merlin slurped the end of his drink, rattling the ice. “Don’t start this again. Why would I need to learn to drive? I’m going to be living on campus and besides, if I’m here, I have you.”

Arthur picked at his last chip, dragging it around in the salt. “Well, obviously. But you should know.”

“I’m broke, how am I supposed to pay for lessons?”

“Obviously I’ll teach you, keep up.”

Merlin guffawed. Someone at the next table looked around. “Oh. You’re serious.”

“What, are you afraid? I know your hand eye coordination leaves a lot to be desired but honestly, it’s not that hard.”

Merlin narrowed his eyes and picked up his phone, wiping it off on his t-shirt and holding up a greasy finger while he scrolled for something. Arthur waited. Merlin made a noise of satisfaction around the straw and turned the cracked screen around to show a screenshot of a text conversation. “Morgana, August 20th, last year,” he said. “And I quote: ‘Just come round will you, I think he’s crying after his first lesson lol.’” He looked challengingly at Arthur, who briefly entertained the thought of throwing something heavy at his sister.

“Right. Well. I wasn’t crying, and I won’t take you into a market town on fucking market day the first time, will I?”

“No,” Merlin agreed. “You won’t.” He dipped a finger in his remaining ketchup and licked it. Arthur made a disgusted face. “There are buses. I can take buses.”

“Didn’t you literally start a petition about how shit the buses are here last year?”

“Maybe they listened to my suggestions, how would you know?”

“They didn’t.”

“Adult scooter.”

Arthur took a moment. “Excuse me?”

“One of those scooters for adults. Or a segway. The options are many,” Merlin said cheerfully.

“I will never acknowledge you in public again if you get one of those,” Arthur said calmly, smacking Merlin’s hand away from his own sauce.

“Yeah, that’ll be a blow. I’ll get a t-shirt with your face on it.”

“I’ll stop driving you everywhere,” Arthur said.

Merlin laughed. “Sure. You tried that in winter, remember? You lasted until it rained and you felt bad.”

“It’s summer,” Arthur said.

“It’s England.”

Arthur shook his head and picked up his drink. He’d been pushing Merlin on this for most of the year, and, knowing him like he did, he suspected that even if he had changed his mind, at this point he wouldn’t tell him out of sheer stubbornness.

“So,” Merlin said, for the second time that afternoon. Ah. So it was now, then.

“So,” he replied, raising an eyebrow.

“Lot of people finished today. Everyone except physics, I think.”

“Good for them.”

“Important day. Should be celebrated, really.”

Arthur gestured at the table between them pointedly, just to wind him up.

“Celebrated properly.”

“Merlin.”

“Come on, Arthur. It’s just in town. That club that has the Thursday deal on, with the shots. Begins with V, you know the one.” Arthur just looked at him. “Arthur,” he whined. “It’s not every day you finish your A Levels. This might be the last time you see some of these people!”

Privately, Arthur felt that this made very little difference. It wasn’t that he actively disliked that many of them, but they were Merlin’s friends, they always had been. It was the one area of their lives that hadn’t melded together over the past seven years, despite Merlin’s best efforts.

“I can’t,” he said with a sigh. Merlin rolled his eyes. “I have a condition. I’m no fun.” He sipped his Coke and looked up at him sadly.

“You are!” Merlin said indignantly.

“Merlin.”

“Well, no, you’re not, not around other people, but I want you there anyway!”

“I’ll pick you up,” Arthur said. He gave in to Merlin on most things, but he’d resisted quite well with this after the first few parties, when Merlin saw he wasn’t exaggerating about how much he disliked it.

“Oh, that’s not what –”

“Just call me,” Arthur interrupted. He shrugged. “I’ll come get you.”

Merlin opened his mouth again, but shut it at the look on Arthur’s face. “Oh, okay, fine. Prat,” he added.

“Idiot.”

* * *

Arthur dropped him home, fabricating a story about Uther being in town and extracting a promise to call him for a lift that night. Hunith waved at him from the door and beckoned to Merlin, who rolled his eyes and tapped the roof of the car as he walked away. The way he told it, if he didn’t clear his room of all his exam season mess that day she was ready to phone the council for a skip.

Arthur waved back and went home, ignoring the disappointment that pulsed briefly as he arrived to a locked door and an empty house. He flopped down on the sofa and turned his phone back on. There was a text from Morgana, a congratulations in the guise of calling him a nerd to which he replied by pointing out that she was, herself, texting from Cambridge. She ignored it. He smiled.

Automatically, he started for his room, meaning to revise for the next exam, and stopped in the doorway once his brain caught up and realised that there was no next exam. He made a few half-hearted attempts to tidy up, shifting loose pages into piles, then lay down and promptly fell asleep.

When he woke again in the late afternoon, he was groggy and disoriented, and made himself a very sad-looking sandwich from whatever was closest in the fridge. He texted Merlin about the cleanup operation and received a picture of a startlingly-clear desk in return, followed by one of a bed covered in so much paper it was hardly visible.

**Arthur** : _not sure that counts as cleaning_

 **Merlin** : _do you think I could sleep on the desk?_

 **Arthur** : _with the amount of caffeine in your system I’m not sure you can sleep ever again, so maybe not as big a problem as you’re thinking_

Merlin disappeared for a bit, popping up intermittently to send pictures of exciting room artefacts, like an ancient and poorly forged PE excuse note and an invitation to his 16th birthday party. There was also a picture of a homework planner from Year 10 with a cock drawn on it, which Arthur was very familiar with, since he was the one who had gotten a lecture for drawing it. It seemed unlikely, but in fact tracked with Arthur’s luck that in a school half full of teenage boys drawing them on every available surface, he was the one to get caught.

Leaving his laptop on in the background, Arthur scrolled through Instagram, barely taking any of it in as the stories started to show people in parks and at each other’s houses, pre-drinking for the big summer night out. The first one, anyway. He had accepted, with some dread, that he was probably going to have to let Merlin drag him to at least one thing before they went away.

After it had finally gotten dark, he had fallen asleep again, and woke to his phone buzzing on his chest. His laptop had died while he was sleeping, and the room was completely dark apart from the faint orange glow of the streetlights.

“’Lo?” he said, dazed.

“Arthur!” Merlin cheered. Arthur winced and pulled the phone away from his ear, putting it on speaker as he sat up and rubbed at his face. The distinctive sound of just outside a club filtered through.

“You ready to go home?” he said, pulling on his shoes.

“Nope!” Merlin said, and Arthur rolled his eyes. “But I almost fell asleep on the loo, and the others say I have to, can you believe that?”

“Where are you?”

“That club! With the name. And the shots.”

“Right. How much were those shots?”

“90p,” Merlin said instantly.

“Noted,” Arthur said tiredly. It was only ten minutes away, anyway. “Go wait out the front, okay, Merlin? I’ll be there in ten.”

“I love you!” Merlin said loudly. Someone laughed in the background.

Arthur sighed. “Bye, Mer-” He’d hung up. Arthur grabbed his keys and left, locking the door behind him. The hall light was on, though he couldn’t remember doing it.

* * *

Happily, Merlin actually was outside the club when Arthur got there, leaning against the wall (which was doing most of the work holding him up, by the looks of it) and gesturing with a cigarette as he talked to an equally drunk girl Arthur didn’t recognise.

Arthur watched him, the way he kept managing to stumble without even moving and the bags under his eyes, and groaned internally. He was fairly sure Merlin could be dressed in a bin bag and covered in mud and his stupid, stupid brain would still find him pretty.

He beeped the horn. Merlin startled and looked around, doing a comic double take. “Arthur!” he yelled, delighted. Arthur failed to suppress a laugh.

Merlin gestured to him, and turned back around to take the girl he was talking to by the shoulders and say something to her in what Arthur felt was an unnecessarily intense manner. She just nodded tearfully, however, and patted him on the arm.

He took a final drag of the cigarette, the end glowing bright for a moment, then dropped the butt to the ground, where Arthur watched him miss it twice before he successfully stood on it.

He pushed himself off the wall and walked unsteadily across the road and over to the car, holding onto the front of it for support until he could fumble with the door handle and pour himself into the seat, settling with his head back against the headrest with a heavy sigh. “You came,” he said, looking at him with a frown that Arthur suspected was entirely a product of how much the car was spinning.

“Of course I came. Put your seatbelt on, you mess.”

Merlin snorted and got it on his second try. He licked his lips. “Missed you,” he said, letting his head roll around to Arthur, eyes a quarter shut.

Arthur took off and made a left hand turn, leaving the overspill and noise of the club behind for quiet, empty streets. It was early, by club standards, the streets clear of the 3am McDonald’s crowd that would emerge later.

“You saw me this morning, tell me you haven’t fried your brain that much.”

Merlin shook his head impatiently. “Missed you,” he said again. Arthur forced himself not to look over at him. “Always miss you,” he added, more quietly, and Arthur wasn’t even sure he was supposed to have heard that, so he didn’t say anything.

Merlin pulled at his seatbelt and let it fall back against his chest. He tapped his fingers on his leg. “Oh! Okay, so,” he said suddenly, “Robbie Davison and Katy C. He got with her.”

“Those two?” Arthur said, intrigued despite himself.

“Oh my God, Arthur, at one point I saw him lick her chest up against the wall.” Arthur pulled a face. “And! And Emily – thingy’s ex, you know the one – got so drunk at pre’s they wouldn’t let her in. She fell on her face getting out of the taxi and the bouncer told her to go home,” Merlin said, giggling.

Arthur laughed, letting Merlin’s stored-up gossip wash over him as he took his usual wrong turn. Part of him felt guilty about it, his one little secret. Other than the big one, that was. In over a year of doing this, Merlin had never once questioned why it took them so long to get home, or why Arthur kept going the wrong way. He just trusted him, or was too drunk to care.

He knew it was pathetic, really, driving around in the middle of the night just for an extra half hour with him, but drunk Merlin was warm and relaxed and funny, and universally delighted to see Arthur, like it made his night every time to be picked up in Uther’s Audi and unload a night’s worth of gossip.

He followed the road out of town in the wrong direction. They’d turn back in a while. Merlin was still going. “…told her to dump him. She’s going to Glasgow. Engineering or something. And what do you call him, that one from your class, he’s going to Wales as well, but Aberystwyth.” Arthur’s grip on the steering wheel tightened minutely. “Who else was it going to Cambridge? That girl that does computers, right?”

Arthur made a noise of agreement. He was really trying not to think about it. Starting over, that was. Without Merlin. He had always been shit at making friends, always too much or not enough, never quite fitting in. He always wanted to skip the part where he made a bad first impression and just get to – well, just get to where he was with Merlin.

“You have to come visit me during reading week,” Merlin said.

“I don’t get one of those,” Arthur said automatically.

“A weekend, then.”

“Maybe. You know I can’t take the car, though.”

“I’ll come to you, then,” Merlin said.

“It’s a long way,” Arthur said quietly.

“So?”

Arthur pressed his lips together. “So it’s a hundred and thirty quid and over three hours and two changes of train. I checked.” And re-checked, and wondered how he could give Merlin the money to do it without him noticing, and how he was going to get time to spend six hours on trains in such a short term.

“Oh.”

“And you can’t drive,” Arthur shot at him, unreasonably annoyed Merlin had even brought it up, or maybe that he hadn’t been thinking about this as much as he had.

“Don’t start,” Merlin said amiably, propping a foot up on the dashboard. He let it fall to the floor and sat forward, lurching a little further than he meant to and reaching out to steady himself. “Hang on,” he said. Arthur took a random right turn, hoping nonsensically to dislodge whatever conclusion Merlin was coming to. He was unsuccessful. “Is _that_ what this is about, all your moaning about the driving?”

“No,” Arthur said defensively. “You should learn, that’s all.”

“No, no, that _is_ it! You’re not allowed your car and I can’t afford the train, you –”

“Shut up, Merlin.”

“Arthur. Arthur,” Merlin said, pulling on Arthur’s elbow and nearly sending them into the middle of the road. “I thought you were just being annoying!” He sounded vaguely distressed.

“I was. Sit back before you kill us.”

“No, Arthur,” he said urgently, hand still on his arm. Arthur glared at him for a second then looked back at the road, away from Merlin’s signature drunken intensity.

“Merlin,” he said.

“I’m going to miss you too, you arse,” Merlin said. Arthur was quiet until he gave up and sat back.

“First lesson on Monday, Emrys.”

Merlin sighed dramatically. Arthur indicated for a turn that would take them back towards Merlin’s but he shook his head and pointed. “Can we go up? Just for a bit.”

* * *

Arthur pulled them over at the side of the road, where it dipped in towards a field. From up here in the hills, they could see the whole town. They got out and leaned against the front of the car. Merlin had quietened down considerably, and the air was still, interrupted only by the occasional distant car.

Merlin pulled his feet up onto the bumper and sat back, Arthur leaning beside him. The town, the few square miles their lives had barely gone beyond, was just a sea of orange streetlights tightly clustered in the dark. It was so close to the longest day that it would only be dark a few more hours anyway, but some stars persisted.

Merlin shifted closer and leaned into Arthur, who closed his eyes and let himself rest his cheek on the top of Merlin’s head. He smelt like smoke and, distressingly, vodka and Red Bull that had obviously been spilt on him at some point. It said an uncomfortable amount about Arthur’s big, embarrassing and long-lasting crush that he even wanted to commit _that_ to memory.

Arthur looked out over the town he’d lived in his whole life, the town he’d fought tooth and nail to stay in when Uther had got his promotion two years ago and tried to drag him off and enrol him at Westminster or City of London or something. Somewhere not-where-Merlin-was, which explained why looking out over the town evoked nostalgia that was little to do with the place itself, but quite a lot to do with the memories he had there with Merlin.

He blinked, and noticed Merlin’s head leaning more heavily on his shoulder, breathing deepening. He shrugged, almost dislodging him.

“Merlin.”

“Mm.”

“Merlin.”

“Yeah.”

“I will leave you here.”

“No, you won’t,” Merlin said around a yawn, making himself more comfortable. Arthur looked to the sky for patience and stood, ignoring the noise of protest from beside him. He grabbed Merlin’s upper arm and dragged him upright, steering him around to the passenger and shoving him into the seat. Merlin tried to do his own seatbelt, he really did, but Arthur ended up reaching across him to do it. Merlin grabbed his forearm on his way back, and he swallowed and extracted himself, closing the door gently and getting in his own side.

He leant his forehead against the wheel for a moment before taking off towards town, Merlin still mostly asleep. It took about thirty seconds of staring into the pitch black to remember to put his headlights on. As they descended the hill, the town rose up to meet them.

* * *

Arthur held his breath as he reached across again to disentangle Merlin from his seatbelt.

“Come on, work with me,” he muttered.

“M’fine here,” Merlin mumbled, frowning. Arthur sighed and helped him stand, and slowly they made their way to the front door. He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and simply reached into Merlin’s pocket himself for the keys, unlocking the door neatly and thanking God that at least Merlin wasn’t the sort of messy drunk that regularly lost all his possessions. He prodded him into the hall, the little light on the table left on for him by Hunith, and handed him back the keys.

“Go to bed. Lock the door after me.”

Merlin flapped a hand at him irritably, concentration taken up on remaining upright and taking his jacket off at the same time. He threw it over the banister and turned back. “Thanks,” he said, swaying slightly. “For coming.”

“You’re a lightweight,” Arthur said. Merlin laughed and pressed a finger to his lips, making a shushing noise. Arthur laughed and mirrored him, turning away to leave only to be pulled into a tight hug, Merlin’s arms around his waist.

Merlin rested his chin on his shoulder, and Arthur didn’t know how he couldn’t feel his heartbeat even there. He patted him on the back, allowing himself a few seconds to rest his hand between his shoulder blades, feeling the warmth of his skin through his thin t-shirt, before pulling away and flicking him lightly.

“Drink some water, idiot.”

“Night, Arthur.”

“Night, Merlin.”

* * *

Arthur braced his hands on the wheel and pushed back with a sigh. He started the engine and looked at the time – 3.15. He supposed it didn’t really matter; it wasn’t like he had anywhere to be the next morning. He glanced back at Merlin’s house and saw the light go off in the hall.

He pulled into his own driveway shortly after and frowned as he saw the light beside the door on. It must’ve been on when he went out, but he hadn’t been the one to do it. He opened the door and kicked his shoes off, chucking the keys onto the table with a clatter before walking to the kitchen. He froze. So did Uther, mid replacing the milk in the fridge, still in a shirt and tie. He let the fridge door swing shut, mouth open.

“Arthur,” he said, surprised.

Arthur floundered, feeling oddly guilty for being out so late. “I- Sorry. I had to pick Merlin up,” he said, with an awkward gesture towards the door.

Uther looked confused. “That’s – alright.” Arthur realised, with a dull lack of surprise, that he hadn’t even known he was out. He cleared his throat. “Exams all done?”

“Uh. Yes. Today, actually. Yesterday, now. History,” Arthur said.

Uther smiled and picked up his coffee. “Good, good. All went well, I assume?”

“Yeah. I mean, I think so.”

“I’m sure you’ll make me proud.”

Arthur smiled tightly as Uther moved to pass him with an awkward clap on the shoulder.

“Dad?” he said, and God but he hated how young it made him sound, how needy and unsure.

“Mm?”

“Are you – are you staying? For the weekend?”

Uther’s mouth opened in surprise. “Just – just tonight. There’s a networking event tomorrow and I…” Arthur was already nodding as Uther trailed off. “Perhaps we could have lunch tomorrow?” he tried. He checked the kitchen clock and grimaced. “I really have to – there’s a call. China. Or California, or somewhere it’s tomorrow or yesterday or not this godforsaken hour. But I’m sure you’re not interested in all that.”

He smiled, and Arthur smiled back without thinking about it, but his mind was busy noticing how old and tired his father suddenly looked, how much more grey in his hair and how many more lines around his eyes. There were little indents on the bridge of Uther’s nose from his reading glasses he was too vain to wear. He was still talking.

“I’ll be sure to take a few weeks off in August, or September, when these negotiations calm down,” he said. “We can celebrate properly then.”

Arthur nodded again. He clenched his hand in his pocket, briefly. “Lunch, then?”

A moment of hesitation crossed Uther’s face, quickly hidden. “Of course. Don’t oversleep,” he said lightly. He waited. “Goodnight, son.”

He turned and left, hitting the light switch on his way out and leaving Arthur in the dark. His footsteps paused. “Oh. Sorry, I –”

“It’s fine,” Arthur said. “Goodnight, dad.”

He waited until Uther’s study door had clicked shut upstairs before letting the rest of the tension bleed from his body and heading up to his room. He opened the clock app on his phone, looked at it, and closed it without setting an alarm.

* * *

When he woke close to midday the next day, he knew without checking that he would already be gone. He sighed into his pillow and groped under it for his phone, squinting as the screen lit. Sure enough, there was Uther’s apology text. Work had booked him on the 1 o’clock train back into the city by mistake. He’d left cash for him to have lunch with his friends (a bitter little part of Arthur wondered if it would make any difference to him to know he only really had one) and he’d be back on Monday, Tuesday at the latest.

Arthur cleared the notification with no reaction, and tapped on the ‘and 12 other messages’ under Merlin’s. He rolled over onto his back with a grin and opened the chat to examine all the different types of shit Merlin was feeling this morning.

As he was reading, a new one popped up.

**Merlin** : _We regret to inform you that Merlin is in fact dead. It was what he wanted._

 **Merlin** : _Side note, we cannot figure out how he got home last night._

 **Merlin** : _Just for our records._

Arthur snorted.

**Arthur** : _he seemed fine when I dropped him home at about 3_

 **Merlin** : _oh thank god I thought so_

 **Arthur** : _plastered, but fine_

 **Merlin** : _yeah yeah what would I do without you, etc_

 **Arthur** : _get murdered_

 **Arthur** : _within the week_

 **Arthur** : _probably join a cult_

He hesitated.

**Arthur** : _definitely never learn to drive_

 **Merlin** : _not now i’m fragile_

He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved Merlin didn’t remember the conversation.

**Arthur** : _you agreed last night_

 **Merlin** : _no I didn’t_

 **Merlin** : _you’d tell me that anyway_

 **Arthur** : _which of us was sober and remembers you getting home??_

 **Merlin** : _it doesn’t count then, I was drunk_

 **Arthur** : _as a future law student, your defence is bollocks, and your first lesson is whenever I say it is_

 **Merlin** : _wish I’d got a taxi_

 **Merlin** : _mum says thanks for bringing me home and she’s sorry you had to listen to me on the way_

 **Merlin** : _she really does like you better_

 **Arthur** : _who wouldn’t?_

* * *

They didn’t see much of each other the next few days. Hunith had taken the weekend off to celebrate with Merlin and drag him out to his uncle’s, who he hadn’t seen since exams started. Merlin sent Arthur a few update pictures of his mostly-habitable room, and a running commentary of all the weird shit Gaius had in his house. Arthur mostly hung around the house, apart from a few alarmingly difficult runs.

Tentatively, he texted Leon, a boy he’d met at an open day for offer holders a few months back, and maintained a slightly awkward stream of small talk about exams and summer. Uther didn’t text, and neither did Arthur. He’d tried before, and Uther always assumed something was wrong if he called him.

On Tuesday, Merlin texted him telling him to come round for takeaway with them, and Arthur was embarrassingly glad to have plans. He tried not let… whatever it was show on his face when Hunith met him at the gate and hugged him like a mother like she always did, congratulating and fussing over him. He’d brought her a bunch of flowers, and held them out in offering.

“Oh, Arthur, these are beautiful!” she said, raising them to her nose. Merlin made a face at him from behind her back. Arthur just raised his eyebrows as she dropped a kiss on his cheek.

“You do deserve some compensation for living with him,” he said, looking at Merlin, who was busy moving his hand up and down in the universal ‘wanker’ motion. Hunith laughed and headed to the kitchen.

“Suck up,” Merlin muttered.

“What’s it like to be an only child and still not the favourite?” Arthur said innocently. Merlin thumped him. Hunith caught him, looking up from where she stood at the sink.

“Merlin,” she said warningly.

Merlin thumped him again, then pulled him into the living room to look at the menu.

* * *

When the food was done, the table strewn with half-empty boxes, they all sat back and Hunith began her usual well-intentioned questioning of Arthur, first about himself (fine) and then about his family (he’d rather not).

“I’m sure your father is very proud,” she said, half a question. She’d met Uther over the years, but Arthur wasn’t sure they’d ever had a real conversation. He knew the feeling. “What did you do to celebrate?” She smiled encouragingly, and Arthur made a split-second decision, the same one he always made.

“He’s pleased I’m continuing the Cambridge tradition. He took a few days off, too, we had lunch on Friday and went to a match on Saturday.” He wasn’t sure why he did it anymore. He was eighteen, it wasn’t like Uther had to be around all the time. Hunith looked like she might have more questions, so he ploughed on. “Morgana’s just finished her first year, now. She’ll be back soon for a week or two before she goes to London for the summer.”

“That’ll be nice, to spend some time with her,” Hunith said, and Arthur nodded. “Are you going to get a job this summer? Merlin’s back at the cinema,” she added. Her eyes twinkled. “Although I hear you’re going to be a driving instructor.”

He must have looked a little panicked, because she smiled reassuringly. “I trust you, and it’s not like you’re going to get pulled over around here. Merlin’s father taught me to drive, you know. I just never took the test.” He smiled weakly and opened his mouth to reassure her some more, but she shook her head, amused. “Don’t worry so much, Arthur.”

Merlin snorted from the other chair, and Arthur shot him a dirty look and switched tracks seamlessly. Something about Merlin just brought it out in him. “Just worried for the car. I know Merlin’s coordination leaves a lot to be desired.”

A prawn cracked bounced off his forehead. Merlin raised his eyebrows in challenge. Arthur glared. Hunith rolled her eyes.

* * *

Arthur threw his box of leftovers into the rapidly-depleting fridge and took out his phone, feeling a little lonely after watching Merlin and Hunith all evening. His thumb hovered over his texts with Uther, and he typed a quick ‘how was your day’ before he could think better of it. His phone vibrated almost immediately.

**Uther** : _Everything alright?_

He sighed.

**Arthur** : _Fine, just checking in._

 **Uther** : _All good here._

He called Morgana, instead, who answered the phone laughing. She always did sound happier than she’d ever been at home. “Arthur?”

“Hey,” he said, heading for the stairs. “What’s up?”

“Just getting ready,” she said. “There’s a big party in college tonight, they’ve got bouncy castles and everything. How are things?”

“Fine, I’m just back from Merlin’s. At least I’ll have leftovers for tomorrow,” he said, a moody edge to his voice he couldn’t quite pin down.

He set the phone down on the bed while he got undressed, and he could hear chatter and giggling in the background.

“Are you sure your culinary skills are up to reheating? That’s pretty advanced stuff.”

“Very funny. When are you coming home?” he said, frowning as she cackled into the phone.

“Stop it!” she said, further away for a moment. “Sorry, not you. Saturday, but only for a few days. Molly knows someone subletting a room in Greenwich, and I have that internship for a few weeks anyway.”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah. Do you need a lift? Is Uther – is he…” He trailed off, wincing. He could practically hear the ice crystals forming in the air.

“No,” she said finally. “I haven’t heard from him. But it’s fine, Ruth is going that way anyway, and I won’t be bringing all my things there.”

That seemed, to Arthur, like a place where she might’ve said ‘home’ instead of just ‘there’, but, well, what did he know? “Sure,” he said.

She paused. “Have you even seen him this week?”

“Yes,” Arthur said, trying not to sound defensive. “Thursday and Friday.”

“He stayed the night?” she said sceptically.

“Yeah.” He tried to resist the urge to embellish. Morgana had a nose for lies. And technically, he imagined Uther had been around both before and after midnight on Thursday night. She made an unconvinced noise, but sighed.

“I have to go, but I’ll see you on Saturday, okay?”

“Have fun,” he said. “Try not to break anyone’s arm on the bouncy castle.” She laughed and hung up, probably thinking fondly of the time she had done just that to him on the trampoline. Harpy.

* * *

Morgana arrived home that weekend in a whirlwind, bombarding Arthur with the details of everyone she knew’s lives, showing him picture after picture of all the fun she’d been having, and forcing him to look at her hideous blisters from wearing heels to parties and balls all week.

She spent most of her time floating around town between coffee and cocktail dates with old school friends who either hadn’t left or were home for summer too, but she tended to drift back home to eat with Arthur. (After a slightly too knowing look at the empty fridge, she had commandeered the car and dragged him to Sainsbury’s for an astonishing variety of things he couldn’t pronounce.)

He had forgotten how much he liked having someone else around, and found his mood improving accordingly, even daring to tease her about visiting Uther and the look on his face if either of them ever turned up at the office. Merlin came over to see her, too. He’d always had a strange combination of fear and respect for her, woven with a general low-level mistrust that didn’t stop them getting along at all. They had a few weird shared interests, too, niche literature genres and the like, and Arthur was happy to let them show off and trade barbs while he washed the dishes.

But she left, as she had always planned to, the next week, picked up by a friend who was going to take them both through Cambridge for their things and then onto London. She hugged him tight when she left, but he thought there was an undercurrent of relief there, too. He watched her go and went inside, opening the cupboards for no reason and almost immediately texting Merlin rather than think about the empty house.

 **Arthur** : _what the fuck do you do with quinoa_

 **Merlin** : _is that one of the curable ones_

 **Arthur** : _dick_

 **Merlin** : _google it_

 **Merlin** : _come to the cinema tomorrow for some real food_

 **Arthur** : _is it stale popcorn_

 **Merlin** : _yeah, real food_

* * *

Merlin’s baggy cinema polo shirt should, by rights, have been hideous, and Arthur tried not to think about what it said about how far gone he was that it wasn’t, really. He took advantage of the few seconds before Merlin realised he was there to watch him, wiping ineffectually at the already-clean counter and moving the straws box a few millimetres.

“Is this where I make a complaint?” he said loudly, and Merlin grinned and pointed off to the left.

“Down there, door that says dickheads.”

“Fuck yourself,” Arthur said pleasantly, leaning on the counter.

“My break’s in twenty, I will, thanks.”

“Jesus, Merlin, you’re handling food.”

“Can I help you with something?”

“You told me to come over,” Arthur said, looking meaningfully at the glow of the popcorn.

“Fine, get back here.”

Arthur grinned and stood, tapping the counter as he made his way around to Merlin’s side, stepping over the stupid little rope that was supposed to keep customers out of it. Merlin shook the world’s smallest popcorn box enticingly, holding it out. Arthur peered in and frowned.

“Not very generous, are you?”

“Not for free,” Merlin said with a wink. Arthur snatched the box and hopped up onto the back counter, swinging his legs. “You’re going to get me fired,” he said casually, refilling his own cup with a few different soft drinks all mixed together. Arthur had given up giving him shit about that. Merlin had never quite moved past the power trip of operating the drinks machine at Pizza Hut birthday parties when they were twelve.

Arthur snorted. The manager of the cinema was famously absent, only appearing on one or two of the busier evenings a week. Merlin said he thought he saw him show up and just disappear into the screens, some days, presumably to have a sleep.

“What are you doing today?” Merlin said. Arthur looked at him blankly and gestured around them, dropping popcorn as he did. “Privileged,” he said dryly. “But wasn’t Uther supposed to get you into the legal department or something?”

Arthur shrugged and shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Didn’t work out,” he said, deciding to omit that Uther had simply forgotten and he had only had it in him to ask him twice before giving up.

“Isn’t anyone hiring?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

Merlin clicked his fingers. “Alice,” he said.

“What?”

“Gaius’s girlfriend. Owns that café in town.”

“What about her?” Arthur wondered, not for the first time, if half of their conversation was simply happening inside Merlin’s head, leaving him to piece together the bits that escaped.

“Jesus, how’d you get into Cambridge? She needs a server, obviously.”

“Oh. For when? How many hours?”

“What am I, your agent? Go ask her.”

“Can’t you put in a good word? Isn’t this what having connections is?” Arthur shook the popcorn box, irritated to have reached only the hard, burnt bits and kernels. He set it down beside him.

“I am the good word, just say you know me and you’ll be fine. Go on,” Merlin said, inclining his head at the door.

“So sorry to be holding you back from your important work,” Arthur said. He hopped down from the counter. “Fine. When do you get off?”

“Four? Half four? Whenever the evening guy shows up,” Merlin said with a shrug. Arthur looked at the clock. That was a long way off. He supposed he might as well go.

They both looked around as the door opened to reveal a family with four children. Arthur grinned at him. Merlin made a rude gesture, hidden by the drinks machine.

“Be nice,” he said, as he circled the counter again, deliberately leaving the popcorn box beside the bin. He smiled politely at the family as he left, and it widened when he heard Merlin sigh and shift into customer service mode as the door closed behind him.

* * *

Not two hours later, Arthur had been greeted, scrutinised, soft-adopted and hired by Alice, who informed him that Merlin had already texted her before he arrived.

“He said you’re not much use, but you mean well,” she said, lips twitching.

“Great,” Arthur said.

“Relax, dear, you’ll learn. Now…” She rummaged under the counter and emerged with a pink apron, which she held up meaningfully. “Rules, I’m afraid,” she said at the look on Arthur’s face. “Also, Merlin asked for a picture.”

“Tell him he can –” Arthur muttered, catching himself just in time. He accepted the apron with a tight smile and tied it on. Alice put her glasses on from where they dangled on a string around her neck and squinted at her phone. He heard the camera shutter noise.

“Right. How do I –”

He sighed. “Let me,” he said, extending a hand as she took her glasses off again in relief. He sent the photo to Merlin, right under the message that did, indeed, say ‘get me a picture’. Accidentally, or so he told himself, he scrolled up an inch to see Merlin’s original message.

**Merlin** : _Give him a chance, I promise he won’t let you down._

He felt his face heat a little, and cursed himself as he handed the phone back, fumbling a little. Alice raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. The phone chimed loudly almost immediately, and Arthur jumped. She held it out to him to read and he took it warily, feeling his face heat again.

“Approved?” she said dryly, adding salt packets to the container at the till.

Arthur shoved the phone back towards her. “Something about men in uniform. I hate him,” he said. Alice just laughed and pocketed the phone, squashing the cardboard box she was holding.

“We’ll get you in the rota, but you’ll mostly be in where Isabella was, so lunchtime or thereabouts, maybe 11-3. Minimum wage, tips are yours.”

“Thank you, Ms –”

She gave him a look. “Alice. And you get lunch after your shift. Don’t be late.” She wandered off to talk to a customer, leaving Arthur still clad in his apron.

* * *

Come four, he was back outside the cinema in the car, swiping at some brightly-coloured, ad-filled game on his phone while he waited. There was a loud knock at the window, and he jumped, looking up to see Merlin laughing.

He tried the handle and, upon finding it locked, made a sad face. Arthur stared, impassive. Merlin moved back and stood up, face momentarily out of view, before bending down again to press his face against the glass, nose squashed to it. Arthur rolled the window down and he yelped, rubbing at his nose.

Arthur unlocked the door. “Get in then, you fucking animal.”

“You didn’t say you were coming back,” Merlin noted as he put his seatbelt on. “Oh, Christ, air conditioning,” he said, holding a hand up to the vent.

“You were outside for all of thirty seconds and it’s not even that hot.”

“I’m not built for this, look at me. My people are pasty.”

“True,” Arthur said, pulling away from the space. “Also, I didn’t text you because then you would’ve been able to back out.”

“Back out of what?” Merlin said distractedly, still adjusting the air conditioning.

“Your first lesson,” Arthur said calmly, watching out of the corner of his eye. Merlin paused.

“What? No. I’m not ready. Aren’t you supposed to take a theory test?”

“You’re also supposed to have a proper instructor,” Arthur pointed out. “But I’m choosing to bear that cross, so I think we’ll manage.”

Merlin groaned. “Is this really necessary?”

“You already agreed,” Arthur said, turning into the car park of the old shopping centre they kept promising to knock down but never did.

Merlin groaned again. Arthur ignored him, turning in a wide circle until they were facing a long, straight stretch of car park. He took the keys out while Merlin looked around as though he’d never been there, or indeed never tried to be a cool, skateboarding kid there until he’d split his head open and Hunith forbade further experimentation.

“You know this is like, a murder location, right? Very murdery vibes.” He shivered exaggeratedly.

Arthur leaned forward and looked up pointedly at the clear blue sky. Merlin sighed. Arthur got out and walked around, but he hadn’t even taken his seatbelt off.

“Get out, or climb over,” Arthur said loudly.

Merlin rolled his eyes with his whole head but unbuckled himself and started what looked like a very awkward process of transferring all his limbs one at a time into the driver’s side until he flopped down, shaking the car.

Arthur got in and held out the keys. Merlin grabbed for them, but Arthur held tight, trying to ignore the part of his hand that was touching Merlin’s.

“These are called keys,” he said.

“This is called deliberately crashing the car,” Merlin snapped, and Arthur let go. He forgot, in between times, how prickly Merlin could be. Merlin put the key in the ignition.

“Wait,” Arthur said.

“What now?”

“Before you start you have to make sure you’re in neutral and the handbrake is on.”

“Yeah, my instructor is a prick, he probably didn’t bother.”

Arthur gritted his teeth. This was not going entirely how he had pictured, although he supposed that was on him for ignoring everything he knew about Merlin. On the bright side, his usual lovesick mooning had taken a firm back seat in favour of fantasies of violence.

“I know the handbrake is on, I’m not that bad,” Merlin said impatiently.

“And neutral?”

Merlin narrowed his eyes and leaned over the gearstick. “There’s no N, is this a trick question?”

“What is this, America? Neutral just means not in gear, like this.” Arthur wiggled the gear stick lightly, trying to ignore the headache he could feel forming.

“Great. Please may I start the car now?”

“By all means.”

Merlin turned the key and looked at Arthur as the engine rumbled. “This is piss easy, I don’t know what took you so long.” He sat back and arranged his hands on the wheel, shifting in the seat and peering in the mirror.

“Move the seat if you want,” Arthur said. Merlin gave him another suspicious look. “Jesus Christ, not everything is a trap.”

“You shouted at Morgana for doing that literally last week,” he said accusingly.

“Yeah, well,” – _it’s different, it’s you_ , he didn’t say – “I’m here to see how you’re fucking it up, aren’t I?” Merlin made a face and started adjusting everything he could reach out of spite. Arthur thumped his head back against the headrest. “I think that’ll do.”

“So what do I do?”

Arthur pointed at the pedals. “Clutch, brake, accelerator. Try them.” Merlin did so, unimpressed, but Arthur caught the minute flinch as the engine revved and smirked. “Push the clutch all the way in and put it in first gear. Don’t –” He sighed as Merlin immediately took his foot off it again. The car jumped violently.

“Jesus, fuck!”

“- do that,” he finished wearily.

“Some teacher you are.”

“It’s traditional to let teachers finish their sentences before doing whatever you want. Do it again. Back to neutral, start the car, back into first and don’t take your foot off it yet this time.” Merlin grumbled to himself but did so. “Slowly – very slowly – let your foot off it and press the accelerator gently at the same time, alright?” Arthur took the handbrake off. They shot forward and stalled. His heart hammered in his chest. “Slower than that.”

“You’re actually, certifiably, insane, you know that? This is a fucking terrible idea.”

“There’s nothing to crash into and no one to run over,” Arthur said, as much to reassure himself as Merlin. “Do it again.”

This time, they actually got moving, rolling slowly forward while Merlin gripped the wheel with white knuckles.

“Let the clutch out all the way and gently – I swear to God, Merlin, _gently_ , - accelerate.”

Arthur got the strong impression Merlin wanted nothing more than to give him a filthy look but couldn’t quite bring himself to take his eyes off the road. They trundled forward for a bit.

“Good. Now, stop.”

Arthur nearly went through the windscreen. The car stalled. Again.

“What the fuck did I do now?”

“You have to put the clutch in. And for fuck’s sake, don’t slam on the brakes like that.”

“You didn’t tell me that!”

“Sorry,” Arthur forced out. He took a deep breath. “Again. Feel for the bite.”

“The fucking what?”

“When you’re balancing the clutch and the accelerator, you can feel the point when it catches, or whatever. The car shifts, the sound changes.”

“Bullshit,” Merlin muttered, looking suspiciously at the pedals as he moved them. “Oh. That.”

“That,” Arthur agreed. “Handbrake,” he said absently, already moving to do it so Merlin didn’t kill them trying to do two things at once. But Merlin groped for it anyway, sweaty hand clamping down over Arthur’s. Arthur’s heart seemed to think they had braked suddenly again, or possibly that he had run a marathon.

“I’ve got it,” Merlin said tightly.

“I’m sure you do,” Arthur said, releasing the brake and slowly extracting his hand from under Merlin’s. They started to move.

* * *

A few more heart attacks later, they had mostly conquered starting, stopping and changing gear. Arthur found himself holding tightly to the handle above his window, but (and because) Merlin was getting more relaxed by the minute. Cocky, Arthur would even venture, as they sped around the car park, Merlin fiddling with wipers and headlights and everything he could reach. He started poking around the heating controls. Arthur felt the car speed up as Merlin’s brain lost interest in what his right foot was doing. The curb at the end of the car park was getting closer.

“Merlin. Merlin, brake, for God’s sake!”

They were both thrown forward. Again. The car stalled. Again. Arthur groaned.

“What?” Merlin said defensively.

“I’m going to have a fucking bruise,” he muttered, rubbing at his chest where the seatbelt lay. “You were going to kill us.”

Merlin grinned, and expertly started the car again. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s hardly rocket science, this, is it?”

“Starting to think rocket science would be safer.”

“I’m a natural, admit it.”

“Yeah, yeah, get out of my seat,” Arthur said, making a shooing motion. “Lesson over,” he said, enunciating clearly. Merlin just stared at him. He sighed and got out, walking around the front while Merlin clambered back over. He adjusted his seat and mirrors again with a frown, but smirked at the sweaty marks Merlin’s hands had left on the wheel. “Bit stressed for a natural,” he said condescendingly.

“It’s summer. It’s hot.”

“Sure.”

* * *

**Morgana** : _sorry I was out all day_

 **Morgana** : _still alive?_

 **Arthur** : _just about_

 **Arthur** : _he’s a hazard_

 **Morgana** : _going to be a long summer lol_

_Not long enough_ , Arthur thought moodily, before texting back the finger emoji and rolling over with a sigh.

* * *

He gave in and let Merlin go on the road the next day, mostly to shut him up and stop him skidding around the car park like a race track. He clutched the Panic Handle as Merlin swung them in a U-turn, chattering the entire time.

“I should’ve known this was easy, if you could do it.”

“Bold words from someone who can’t change gear and turn at the same time.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Or park,” Arthur said spitefully.

Merlin pointedly slowed to a slightly aggressive stop. “What’s that then?”

“Stopping.”

“Same thing. Can I go on the road then? No parking there.”

“Fine,” Arthur said tightly. Merlin cheered. “Just around the –” They stalled. “Block,” he finished tiredly as Merlin glared.

“You distracted me.”

Arthur closed his eyes. “If we get caught, I will swear on anything they give me that you’re a hijacking delinquent.”

* * *

Merlin talked non-stop as they whizzed around the empty roads in a loop, car shuddering slightly every time he changed gear, and his hand involuntarily turning the wheel when he did so to the point where Arthur had to intervene several times. He was starting to break through the panic and into existential territory.

“This is how I die,” he said, as Merlin kept talking. “Here, with you, doing thirty on an empty road because you can’t stop fucking talking long enough to concentrate on the road. I suppose I had a good run,” he said glumly.

“What? No you didn’t,” Merlin said. “Anyway, like I was saying…”

Arthur allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment. He figured it didn’t make much difference. He wondered, vaguely, how this had all happened. Not just the driving, but whatever combination of bad choices and unfortunate circumstances had led to him not only becoming best friends with Merlin, but falling for him despite his best efforts. His eyes flew open in a panic as he remembered his paying attention did, in fact make a difference.

“Merlin, that’s a fucking give way line, not a finish line, _please_ –”

* * *

They fell into a pattern, then, and summer began to slip away in a blur of lunch shifts and bothering Merlin at the cinema and driving. Arthur saw Uther once or, more rarely, twice a week. A few times he even had dinner and small talk with him. The first time Uther had been home to see Arthur leave for the café, he had done a double take, but nodded and clapped him on the back, muttering about bootstraps and responsibility and initiative. He had even told him not to be home late, and Arthur had nodded and come home at midnight anyway, because in his heart of hearts, he knew that his father mostly sort of… forgot about him when he wasn’t in front of him.

A few times a week they drove up to the castle ruins, or up into the hills, and Arthur let Merlin drive almost every time. Guiltily, he was savouring every (stressful) second as a passenger, as somewhere along the way he had realised the advantages. For the first time, it was Merlin who had to concentrate on the road (in theory) and Arthur who was free to look around him. Or, as the case turned out to be, look at Merlin.

He spent a lot of time that summer watching the way the wind caught Merlin’s hair, the way the muscles in his arms shifted as he gestured and raved at other drivers. He watched how he flipped through the radio stations, and how his throat moved when he fumbled for his drink and knocked it back, usually on a corner or somewhere equally unwise.

Every once in a while Merlin would turn and grin at him, bright and easy, and Arthur would consider causing a gentle car crash and simply kissing him in a field somewhere until someone noticed they were gone. For all his lack of attention about some things, he had always had a way of looking at Arthur like he was the only thing in the world. Like he saw him. He still forgot, the odd time, to take the handbrake off, and Arthur reached for it most times, hoping for the touch of his hand and hating himself for it. As if he could ever risk losing this.

Merlin actually signed up to do his theory test, and passed, by the skin of his teeth and rather more by a convoluted theory of how multiple choice tests worked than by actual studying. He refused to learn how to park properly, partly out of a fear of scratching not Arthur’s, but someone else’s car, but mostly because Arthur was a mug who could be embarrassed into doing it for him rather than create an even bigger queue in the the Tesco car park.

_(“I’m not your fucking valet.”_

_“I wasn’t intending to give you a tip, don’t worry.”_

_“Here’s a tip, learn to fucking park.”)_

* * *

The Thursday they got their exam results and confirmed their university places, the heavy feeling never left Arthur’s chest. Uther – accidentally or not – had managed to be home, and congratulated him in an almost-choked-up kind of way, with a rough hug and a mumble about how proud he was. Hunith almost broke his ribs when she saw him, and he ducked his head, embarrassed and insisting that Merlin had done just as well. Merlin even succeeded in convincing him to go out that night, laying it on thick about all the house parties he’d avoided so far.

A few drinks quickly became rather a lot of drinks, and soon, he was in the middle of a dancefloor hugging someone. He wasn’t sure who, but it didn’t matter much. His lips were numb and his face warm, and the music was pumping through his entire body. He laughed, he thought, and the sound of it was drowned before it was out of his mouth, snatched away in the dark. It was easy. For the first time, he understood why people liked this.

Everyone was so drunk, either celebrating or drowning their sorrows, that anyone who even remotely recognised him was yelling and hugging him. They never lingered, or danced, or invited him outside, but at least they were happy to see him. He’d even managed to lose Merlin, for once, and slowly the idea of looking for him rose to the surface. After all, they were celebrating, and he loved Merlin. For the first time in a long time, that knowledge simply existed in his mind, without the tangled snarl of confusion and fear and uncertainty it usually brought with it. It just sat there, so clear and bright he could almost imagine he could follow it and find Merlin at the other end.

He scanned the crowd, looking for the familiar head, locking onto it quickly even with slightly blurry vision. He followed like a magnet as Merlin weaved towards the door, but got held up by a gaggle of very drunk girls who couldn’t stand to be more than four inches apart. He stumbled as he made his way around them, eyes on the door, and finally, the cool air hit him and he sucked in a few deep breaths.

It was no less crowded out here, everyone looking for a seat or a light or their friends. He started the search for Merlin again and found him. But the warm, light feeling in his chest seemed to harden and crack as he found him and his closed eyes, a lazy half-smile playing on his lips as some sandy-haired boy mouthed at his neck. Merlin’s arms were looped around the boy’s shoulders, a lit cigarette dangling from one hand. He had been getting into the car smelling faintly of smoke all summer, and Arthur had never quite been able to dislike it the way he should.

The other boy pulled away, finally, and Merlin opened his slightly-glazed eyes and grinned. He raised his hand to take a drag from the cigarette, but the boy grabbed his wrist and took it from him, bringing it to his own lips and inhaling. He braced his arms around Merlin’s head and leaned in, exhaling a thin line of smoke into his mouth before closing the gap with a kiss. The cigarette fell to the ground.

The music floating through the door behind Arthur seemed to fade as he watched. His face felt hot, and his previously pleasantly hazy thoughts felt rather like someone had dumped a bucket of icy water on them. He forced himself to look away, swallowing, and found his feet taking him automatically towards the exit, weaving through the crowd. Someone’s cigarette burned the back of his hand as he brushed past them, but he barely felt it.

“If you leave now you’ll not get back in, mate,” one of the bouncers cautioned. Arthur just nodded and let his feet take him home.

* * *

He did not spend the next few days moping, no matter what the look Alice kept giving him or his slightly terse texts with Merlin implied. He had no reason to be upset. Or at least no right. It wasn’t like Merlin knew he – in fact, the whole point had been, for a long time now, making sure he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure why it hurt so much to feel like he was losing something that had never been his.

The morning after the night out, he’d woken up to a few ‘where are you’ texts from Merlin, and replied out of guilt. Merlin had shared a taxi home with a handful of others less than an hour after the time Arthur told him he’d got Uther to pick him up. (He had walked. His feet ached.)

Unable to restrain himself, he mentioned casually that Merlin had looked like he was having fun, but got no response. Rather than face the invite to meet up and compare notes he could see coming, he headed it off at the pass with a story about Uther wanting to do something with him and Merlin let it drop.

In reality, he was fairly sure Uther had cracked his bedroom door early that morning and said something Arthur, in his hungover state, had missed completely, but he assumed he was gone and couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

He went back to the café the next day. Alice congratulated him again, as did a few of his regulars, but his smile felt flat even to him. The work was good, distracting, and for a few hours at a time he managed not to think about his phone or why he wasn’t going to drive by the cinema on his way home. Merlin sent him a question mark about that, and Arthur felt the familiar twist of guilt when he said Alice had asked him to stay on. More lies.

After another night thoroughly wallowing in his own pathetic feelings, he decided to pull himself together. If nothing else, Merlin was doing his test at the end of the month and needed the practice. The next day they resumed their drives, and if Merlin made a few suggestive comments about results night, then, well, who was Arthur to begrudge him anything? At least from where he sat in the passenger seat he couldn’t see the love bite on the other side of his neck.

* * *

The screws in the sad little bench outside the testing centre were starting to dig into Arthur’s back as he waited. He had graduated to fully lying down, legs dangling off the edge, eyes closed against the sun. Just as he was starting to think about sitting up again, the sound of a familiar engine approached and he cracked an eye to see Merlin coming back through the metal gates, slowing to a stop (miraculously) inside the white lines.

He swung himself upright with a wince, lifting a hand in front of his eyes to block the sun. The engine died, and he watched as the back of Merlin’s head nodded, listening to the examiner, a tired-looking old man with a clipboard. The door clicked and Merlin got out, grinning. Arthur stood and crossed his arms, trying to look like he wasn’t dying to know quite as much as he was.

“Well?” he drawled.

In response, Merlin launched himself at him, nearly knocking him back into the bench with the force of it. Arthur took a step back and embraced him carefully. As soon as Merlin let go, he was off, diving into a blow by blow of the same test route Arthur had taken the previous year.

“I can’t believe they actually asked those stupid questions you had me do –”

“What’s it going to take to get you past this ‘Arthur is full of shit’ instinct?” he wondered aloud, ignored.

Merlin brandished his piece of paper enthusiastically, jabbing at the ticked boxes. “And a minor for that, the bald bastard, but…” Arthur fumbled in his pocket, suddenly, remembering. “…And no manoeuvres, thank fuck, I think he wanted me out of the car – don’t say it – and I mean, that’s probably illegal, but so is the way I do a three point turn, so – what’s that?” he said accusingly, zeroing in on the object Arthur was holding out to him.

“It’s called a keyring. Sometimes people use them to –”

“I don’t even have any keys,” Merlin said, already trying to pry it out of Arthur’s hand. It was a stupid thing, a plush wizard hat dangling from a chain, covered in stars.

“It’s a gesture, I can take it back if you don’t –”

Merlin snatched it from him and held it to his chest like something precious. “I didn’t say that!” he said indignantly, before softening. “Thanks.”

Someone tapped impatiently at the window of the testing centre, gesturing for Merlin to come in and sign whatever he had to sign. He grinned at Arthur and let the keyring dangle from a finger before closing his hand on it and turning away.

Arthur watched him go with a familiar fond exasperation before the door slammed and he blinked, a heavy feeling settling into his stomach. Oh, hell. Merlin didn’t need him anymore, did he?

* * *

Time kept marching forwards, however much he might have wished otherwise. Merlin still didn’t have enough saved for a car and insurance, so they still went out almost every day in Uther’s. Merlin drove less now that he didn’t need the practice, or now that it had lost the edge of it being slightly illegal. Hard to tell.

They worked and ate popcorn and drove around inside the same hour’s radius they had been doing all summer. They had kept threatening to go further, maybe to the beach or the mountains, but never got any further into the planning as the weeks slipped away. Arthur didn’t really care where they went.

Merlin’s childhood best friend Will came home for a week, at one point, and Arthur mostly left them to it. Will had gone to primary school with Merlin, then the other comprehensive for a couple of years before his family moved to Wales. They had all grown up enough now to be civil to each other, but Arthur and Will weren’t different in the complementary sort of way like Arthur and Merlin. It was more of a volatile, explosive chemicals reaction. So he met up with them once, exchanged a few snarky comments, and asked Alice for more hours that week.

August began to creep into September, the days shortening inch by inch and the first of the autumn chill starting to hover on the edges of warm days. Merlin was only a week from leaving for uni, now, with Arthur due to go at the end of the month. The more he tried not to think about it, the worse it was. Sometimes he caught Merlin looking at him like he wanted to ask what was going on, and sometimes as though he knew perfectly well what it was.

The week Merlin was due to leave, they found themselves back at the hill they’d parked on that night after exams, Merlin’s feet on the dashboard as he skipped through song after song, barely letting them play for ten seconds. Arthur had slid his own seat back and had one leg curled up on the seat, right arm out the open window. He looked over the town as the sun started to set.

Merlin wedged his phone under his thigh and rummaged in his pockets, producing a battered pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He put the cigarette in his mouth and looked questioningly at Arthur, who stared and shook his head.

“My dad – his car…” He trailed off, unsure why he was even worried. He couldn’t remember the last time Uther had driven the thing, too busy with first class train compartments and taxis on the company’s dime to be bothered. Besides, he was never home long enough to need it, or indeed paying enough attention to notice if Arthur had spray painted a cock on the bonnet.

Merlin shrugged and sat upright, pointing outside. Arthur unfurled himself to follow him, and they leaned against the bonnet in silence. Merlin lit up and exhaled.

“Since when do you smoke enough to buy your own?” Arthur said.

Merlin grinned. “Smoke breaks, baby.”

“You don’t work enough to need a break. Don’t you have to stay at the counter?”

“I go when the movies are on, genius.”

Arthur shook his head and pointedly did not ask if smoking-area boy had anything to do with it. Instead, he gestured for it himself. Merlin raised his eyebrows and handed it over. Arthur took it, careful not to touch his fingers, and placed it between his lips. Some bitter little part of him noted that this was as close as his and Merlin’s lips were ever going to get. He inhaled and exhaled, then handed it back with a mild noise of disgust. He never had liked the taste.

“Hypocrite,” Merlin said easily. “Not even a cough. Since when do _you_ smoke?”

“You know I don’t,” Arthur said. “There was a pack in the house, once. I got curious.” He had always had a lot of time on his hands to think about why he really did things, but he decided it would only bring down the mood to mention that he had hoped Uther might notice, or even be angry with him. All he had gotten for his troubles had been a burn on his finger and a horrible taste in his mouth. Merlin nodded and looked ahead.

“So,” he said on an exhale. Arthur tensed. Merlin really had to get a better way of introducing things he knew Arthur wouldn’t want to hear. “Saturday.” He was leaving on Saturday, Gaius taking him and Hunith.

“Saturday,” Arthur agreed.

“What do you think it’ll be like?” Merlin said quietly, flicking ash off to one side. Where Arthur tended to avoid the subject altogether, Merlin wasn’t that keen on being serious about it either, preferring to make jokes about all the walks of shame he planned to do and the wild parties he was going to go to. Arthur picked a spot in the sky, the edge of a cloud, and watched it start to flush orange before his eyes.

 _Lonely_ , he thought, automatically. It was the word he kept coming back to, the one that wouldn’t leave him alone ever since they got their offers. Since it became real. He was already lonely without Merlin. He wasn’t sure what it would do to not even be in the same city.

“Different,” he said, instead. “Quieter,” he added, with a meaningful look at Merlin, who laughed and kicked him.

He took a final drag and dropped the butt, squashing it in the dirt. He leaned back a little, hands braced behind him. Arthur’s cloud that he had been staring at drifted away. Inconsiderate, really. The orange deepened, close to the horizon.

“We’ll – we’ll be alright, though,” Merlin said, and Arthur couldn’t tell if it was a question or not. A small lump rose in his throat as he watched a bird skim across the sky, and somehow he knew that if he looked at Merlin right now, something might change, and he wasn’t sure he could handle it. Not tonight. Not here, looking over the town they were about to leave. The town he knew so well that even with the bitter aftertaste of smoke in his mouth the air tasted just the same. So he didn’t look, and he couldn’t tell if Merlin was doing the same.

“Course,” he said eventually. He saw Merlin nod out of the corner of his eye. A breeze ruffled their hair, the first hint of coolness in it. They got back in the car and drove home, subdued.

* * *

Merlin left. And then so did Arthur. And it was awful, and somehow anticlimactic. A quick hug and a few insults and a promise to FaceTime and a see you at Christmas, and they were gone.

He saw Merlin’s new room in halls when he called him, camera swinging around so violently Arthur could hardly follow what was where, and waved him off when his flatmates interrupted. He received a number of excruciating screenshots of Welsh Tinder, of lads with exotic names and terrible opening lines. (Merlin was in a boy mood of late, as if Arthur’s life wasn’t hard enough.)

He worked his last shift at Alice’s, and packed up his things, hauling books and clothes out to the car in boxes and suitcases. Uther drove him, unusually talkative as he reminisced about his own college days. When Arthur’s bland little room was set up, his handful of photos only serving to make the pinboard seem more bare, they went to lunch before Uther left with a handshake and a hug.

When he was gone, Arthur had to sit down suddenly on the bed as it sank in. He was alone. Really alone. He sat, absorbing the new view from his window, and listened to the rest of his corridor moving in.

He busied himself unpacking and shelving books for a while, until a knock came at the door and a pretty, dark-skinned girl introduced herself as Gwen, accidentally insulted him four times and dragged him down to the college bar.

* * *

He supposed he must’ve grown up, somewhere along the way. It wasn’t as bad as he’d worried it would be. He was absorbed into a group with the people on his floor more easily than he would have thought possible, and while he still wasn’t the life and soul of the party, he almost never turned down invitations anymore.

The work was hard, harder than anything he’d done before, and some days it seemed like he would never get on top of it, eyes aching as he stared at the screen late into the night. He wasn’t quite as passionate about law as some of his coursemates, but he threw himself into it with the same fervour as everyone else.

He texted Merlin pretty often, and called him maybe once a week, but they’d never been huge on phone calls and even though they were both fine, and Arthur was actually as happy as he could’ve hoped, there was still an ache.

They arranged for Arthur to visit one Saturday in November, but because he wasn’t allowed a car in Cambridge, he had to get the train at the crack of dawn, changing in London just as the city was waking up. With the work piling up, he didn’t even really have time to take the day off, and ended up bringing his reading on the train.

As the train approached Cardiff, the words started to swim on the page, losing whatever vague meaning they had once had. What if it wasn’t the same? What if something had changed? What if nothing had, and it was the same gut punch to spend time with him it had always been?

A wave of relief washed over him when Merlin met him at the station holding a sheet of lined A4 that said ‘prat’ in ballpoint, and he shoved him before pulling him into a hug, breathing him in. Merlin was slightly better at mornings than Arthur, but he still looked like it had been a very late night, all dark circles and disastrous hair. Arthur’s stupid heart helpfully confirmed that apparently, he still didn’t care, and apparently, he still wanted to taste the hideously strong coffee he was sure was on Merlin’s lips.

He relaxed, letting Merlin chatter away as they walked out into the city. They wandered around the rest of the morning, eating chips and shivering. Arthur called it a shithole and Merlin tripped him. They went back to Merlin’s flat, where his friends weren’t quite sure what to make of Arthur, at first. He felt the old fear start to creep in, and he could hear himself being blunter than he intended, awkward and stilted. But Merlin, always the first to see it, manoeuvred him into an argument over some piece of ancient history between them that got him so riled up he entirely forgot he was nervous. He almost forgot the others were still listening until Gwaine choked on his drink as Arthur’s voice rose to accuse Merlin of being a thieving little bastard. He flushed, and Merlin grinned, and cautiously, he relaxed.

They were nice, his flatmates; Gwaine, Freya, Lance and Percy, and Merlin fit in well, seamlessly even. But then it always had been easier for him, and Arthur supposed he wasn’t doing so badly at Cambridge, either. It was different, being thrown into living with people, especially when you spent the first week of that cohabitation getting paralytically drunk with them at freshers.

Merlin had a job in Cardiff now, too, at another cinema. One where he actually had to work, and where the manager showed up. He almost had enough saved up for insurance, and Hunith was going to help with the rest. He had his eye on a car and everything.

“Is that a threat?” Arthur said mildly, as he heard this. Merlin shot him the fingers. “I taught him to drive,” he added for the others’ benefit.

“You survived, don’t be dramatic,” Merlin said, making a face. Arthur made one back, then laughed and looked away to see Gwaine watching them with a kind of interest. Christ, he hoped he wasn’t giving himself away to more people who weren’t Merlin. He barely remembered how not to act like a lovesick fool anymore, it had been so long.

When he had to leave, Merlin walked him back to the station in the dark, their breath fogging in the air.

“Jesus, I miss driving everywhere,” Arthur said, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets and trying (again) not to think too hard about the current looming separation. He had his friends in Cambridge now, he knew that, but he’d known them all of six weeks, and this was _Merlin_. Merlin, who’d given him a black eye when they were eleven, and thrown rubbers at him in Geography, and whose house felt more like home than Arthur’s, sometimes. Merlin, who Arthur had been half in love with since they’d met, and fully in love with since he was sixteen and realised what the feeling was.

“Wait until you see the car I have picked out,” Merlin said. “You’ll be so jealous you might actually shit yourself.” Arthur scoffed. “Mum’s going to sort the insurance once I send her the rest. I would’ve had it sooner, but Christ there’s a lot of pubs in this place.”

He held on tight as they hugged at the ticket barriers, train announcements ringing around them. Arthur told himself sternly to get a grip, and that it was only a handful of weeks apart to go, but he let himself tuck his chin into the crook of Merlin’s shoulder before letting go.

“Arthur –” Merlin said suddenly, searching his eyes for something.

“I have to – the train,” Arthur said quickly. “See you in a few weeks, yeah? Let me know what day you’re going home.”

Merlin hesitated. “Yeah,” he said. “Course I will.”

In movies, the music always seemed to swell and the world slow down when, against their every instinct, one person had to walk away from the love of their life. They would look deep into the other’s eyes, maybe even shed a tear, and turn around like something was physically holding them in place. But Arthur’s feet obeyed him just fine, and his hand scanned his ticket without so much as a tremble, and the barrier closed behind him. He waved one last time, and turned away as though it were easy.

He wanted to stay, to fuck it all and tell Merlin, to sit down on the ground and refuse to leave like a child in a supermarket. Of course he did. And maybe it should have been harder. But all he could think as he stepped lightly onto the train was that movie characters simply didn’t have enough practice ignoring what they wanted.

* * *

Term rolled on, and he lost all sense of what day it was, drowning in lectures and supervisions and hours in the library. He saw Morgana most weeks, and it was nice, easier than it was with Uther around. He spoke to him most weeks, too, and Uther made vague noises about visiting each other, but Arthur was under no illusions. He never heard him indicate that he even went home, anymore, and while it was strange to think of the house so empty all the time, he supposed Uther must have been relieved.

* * *

The first time Arthur kissed a boy in a club, he almost threw up with nerves. No one was even close to looking at him, all wrapped up in their own buzzed, neon moments at the weekly gay night. He leaned in and did it, hands hovering by his sides for a moment before resting on the other boy’s sides. He lost track of time, like that, but even as he knew it was nice, he knew somewhere in the back of his mind who he still wished it was, and suddenly it seemed unfair. He knew no one here was looking for more than a night, but he thought it should at least be an honest night, somehow.

He pulled away with an apologetic smile and met Gwen’s eyes. She gave him an impressed look and a thumbs up, but frowned when he didn’t respond with anything other than a weak smile before heading for the door, not stopping until he was breathing in the freezing night air. He sat heavily on the curb and ran a hand over his face, fingers hovering at his lips, drying in the breeze.

“Hey,” Gwen said quietly from behind him, and he turned around to see her watching him, arms wrapped around herself. He tried to dredge up another smile, but the look in her eye told him it wasn’t going to work.

“Hey,” he said, and turned back around. She sat down beside him on the curb, leaning into his side.

“You know it’s –” She paused. “You know it’s okay, right? That you like boys. No one here cares.”

“What? Oh. It’s not that,” he said. “Not really.” His problem wasn’t boys. His problem was one.

“Okay,” she said simply.

He closed his eyes and leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “There’s – at home. There was…There is…”

“Someone,” she finished for him, nodding in understanding as she sat up to look at him, shoulders still touching.

Arthur let out a heavy breath. “Someone. He’s – we never – I just…”

“It’s alright, Arthur.”

He laughed, an ugly little cut-off sound. “He’s my best friend,” he said quietly. He’d never admitted it out loud before. Gwen made a sympathetic noise and reached for his hand, squeezing it.

“My arse is freezing sitting here,” she said, “Buy me some chips and tell me about it?” She stood, dusting herself off and extending a hand. Arthur nodded, and took it.

* * *

Having left earlier than the others, they had the advantage of not being miserably hungover the next day. Leon, for one, was extremely resentful. Still, Arthur found himself skipping a lecture to wallow in a bit of self-pity. He felt he’d earned it. More accurately, he felt cursed. Like he had some incurable bloody illness, actually. If time and distance were doing approximately nothing against his stupid crush, and even his horny eighteen-year-old-boy brain was going to prevent him from getting laid about it, then he was in even deeper shit than previously thought. And he had thought it was pretty bad.

After dragging himself to the library in the afternoon, he picked at his dinner until Gwen set her fork down with a sigh.

“Let’s go out,” she said decisively. Arthur stared. Leon stared even more, having only just started to recover from the previous night. “Not out out, you lunatics. Pub out.”

Leon still winced. “Tempting, but no,” he said, sounding genuinely regretful.

“I’ve got an essay – ” Arthur started, but closed his mouth as Gwen gave him a hard look.

“You,” she said, pointing her cup at him, “Have sorrows to drown.”

He grimaced. Leon looked intrigued. “Sorrows?”

Gwen smiled. “He can tell you while he cries into his beer.” She waited.

Arthur and Leon exchanged a look and shrugged.

* * *

In the end, they had only stayed at the pub for two drinks, being as they were broke students with stronger alcohol in their bedrooms. They ended up in Gwen’s room, drinking first the end of a bottle of wine, and then some gin with juice in it.

Arthur sat sideways on her bed, back against the wall and legs extended over the edge. Gwen lay with her head in his lap, and Leon was curled up in the chair beside them.

“It’s –” Arthur swallowed and frowned slightly at his mug full of gin. “He’s my best friend.”

Gwen nodded in his lap and reached a slightly unsteady hand up to tap the bottom of his mug. “Drink,” she said sagely. Arthur did. Leon looked vaguely puzzled, but Gwen shook her head at him ever so slightly.

“He’s my best friend,” Arthur repeated hoarsely. “I can’t risk it.” He drank again to force down the sudden lump in his throat, grimacing as it became apparent that, somehow, the gin was all at the bottom. Gwen was a warm weight in his lap, and Leon looked sympathetic, raising his own cup a few inches in commiseration.

He had never had anyone to tell before, and somehow that knowledge was ruining him more than the rest of it. Before now, the only person he’d had to tell he loved Merlin had been Merlin. This was new, and almost frightening in its ease. He had friends. He reached clumsily for Gwen’s hair.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. She patted his hand. Leon snored lightly in his chair.

* * *

Most people had already left for home by the time mid-December rolled around, and Arthur was thoroughly bored. Merlin was going home the next day, so he had seen no real point in going any earlier. Morgana was staying even longer than he was, intent on doing a proper Christmas as close to the day itself as possible with her friends.

In fairness, Arthur and Gwen and Leon’s group had stuck around for a few extra days after term – real days, days where their time was their own, without lectures or labs or classes. After sheepishly returning a number of late library books, they were free to wander the town at a leisurely pace, rather than the stress tunnel-vision that had characterised much of the last few months.

They’d even taken one of the college punts out on the freezing river one of the days, taking turns to play the role of wildly incorrect tour guide as they pushed, the rest huddled in blankets with their drinks. Only one of them had managed to fall in, in the end, a boy from the north named Owen who emerged shivering and took such a large swig of gin to remedy the situation that he almost vomited.

Arthur wasn’t bringing that much home, just a suitcase of books and a little pile of clothes. The bare shelves left behind were an uncomfortably clean slate, reminding him of when he first arrived and almost feeling as though they had undone the term. Leon had left the day before, and Gwen’s father was picking her up that afternoon. Arthur had told them Uther was coming the next day, but he fully intended to get the train.

He leaned his elbows on the windowsill and looked out. It seemed so familiar now that it was strange to imagine ever not knowing this place. There was a knock at the door and Gwen appeared around it, smiling and walking in, jangling her keys.

“All ready?” Arthur said.

She nodded. “My brother is coming, too, it turns out. He’s been travelling for ages,” she added, walking over to join him by the window and bumping his shoulder gently.

“We made it,” he said wryly. “A whole term.”

“I don’t know, I definitely think I died somewhere around Halloween,” she said.

He snorted and turned his attention back to some bundled-up tourists on the street taking pictures of a random gate. The sky was slate-grey and clearly threatening rain, washing all colour from the city and making it somewhere to get through as quickly as possible. They’d had a day of snow, last week, but it never lasted well down here.

He nudged Gwen and nodded down at the other side of the street, where a handful of teenagers were seemingly having a full photo shoot. He opened his mouth to make fun of them, but frowned when a car started blaring its horn as it turned onto the street from the left. He turned his head and continued to frown as a tiny, offensively yellow car sped along the street, drawing level with the main door of his building and stopping in the middle of the road.

Arthur squinted at it. The drivers side window slowly rolled down and Merlin stuck his head out and around to get a better look, scanning the windows, his face scrunched up. Arthur stared. Merlin found his window and grinned, before leaning on the horn some more.

“Jesus Christ,” he heard himself say, mouth pulling up into a smile.

“What is he _doing_?” Gwen said irritably, leaning in closer for a better angle. Arthur looked over to answer her, and caught the moment her mouth fell open in surprise. She spun around to look at the photos on Arthur’s wall. “Is that –”

“It is,” Arthur said cheerfully, moving back to open the window as far as it would go. He leaned out, not caring who saw him. “What the fuck are you doing?” he called loudly. Gwen smacked his arm.

A cyclist gestured angrily as he passed Merlin, who glared after him before turning back and yelling something Arthur couldn’t quite make out. He shook his head and Merlin tried again, the breeze falling enough to let him hear it this time.

“I’m driving around again, you better be outside when I get back,” Merlin yelled up.

“Plenty of parallel parking round here,” Arthur shouted back.

Merlin shot him the fingers in response and ducked back into the car with a muffled “Five minutes!”

Arthur pulled the window closed, laughing, and turned to see Gwen’s raised eyebrows. He shrugged.

“I suppose you’re leaving today too, then,” she said dryly.

“Apparently so.”

She laughed and pulled him into a tight hug, tucking her face against his chest. He squeezed her and let her go. “Go on, then. I’ll see you next month, yeah?”

“Next month,” he agreed as she left, still shaking her head. He took a deep breath and reached for the last of his things, shoving them into a random bag.

* * *

He signed out at reception, waving at the woman behind the desk with what he suspected must have been a fairly manic grin, because she gave him a slightly strange look as she wrote his name in the book with a sigh.

Merlin came screeching around the corner just as Arthur stepped out into the street. He tried to contain his smile and turn it into something more appropriately disdainful regarding whatever the fuck Merlin was driving, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was. The brakes of the two-door yellow shitbox in question squeaked as it stopped across the street, and he gestured impatiently for Arthur to get in, tipping a can of coke back as he waited.

Merlin chucked the empty can into the back seat as Arthur got in and just barely resisted kissing him, instead going for a slightly inconvenient hug over the gearstick and handbrake. Merlin laughed and hugged him tight.

“Miss me?” he said.

“You wish,” Arthur replied, putting his seatbelt on. A flashy BMW overtook them with a frustrated rev, driver shouting angrily.

“Prick!” Merlin yelled out after him, earning a glare from a passing mother with her toddler. Muttering about how it wasn’t illegal to let someone into your car, he shifted into first gear. On automatic pilot, Arthur reached for the handbrake, a habit ingrained from months of sitting beside him as Uther’s car beeped insistently at them for trying to drive when it was on.

But Merlin’s hand landed on top of his, strong and sure, and he looked up in surprise, flushing. Merlin just grinned and looked back ahead, pressing gently on Arthur’s thumb to release the brake and only letting go completely when he had to change gear. Arthur let go and pulled his hand safely back to his lap.

“So –” he tried to start, but Merlin just turned up the volume on what Arthur realised was an honest-to-god tape deck. He rolled his eyes and shifted in his seat, feet knocking against… several things in the small but impressive mountain of Car Debris, which in Merlin’s case was apparently coke cans, water bottles, napkins and a handful of cigarette butts. “So,” he tried again. “Where do the cool kids get their cassette tapes nowadays?”

“The internet, dickhead. And us poor folk have something called car boot sales.”

“Is that where you got the car, too?” Arthur said mildly.

“You can walk,” Merlin offered, narrowly squeezing through a red light by absolutely flooring it. Arthur clutched at the Panic Handle, grateful that some things were universal. He relaxed his grip and tapped his fingers against the window as they joined the motorway following several very last minute lane changes and a lot of swearing. Leaning forward, he frowned at the signs above their lane and realised they weren’t going home.

“Hijacking me again, are we?”

“I don’t think it’s hijacking if it’s my car,” Merlin said distractedly, overtaking someone who was doing the speed limit.

“Kidnapping, then,” Arthur acquiesced. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” Merlin said cheerfully. “Just enjoy the ride – oh, fucking drive, would you?” he said impatiently, frowning at the elderly man in front.

Arthur rolled his eyes and sat back, poking around in the glove compartment and making a face at whatever the sticky thing in the cup holder was.

“Do you actually live in halls, or in this thing?” he said. “This is impressively disgusting.”

“I wasn’t going to clean it just for you, was I? Didn’t realise you were so delicate,” Merlin said, reaching across without looking in an attempt to condescendingly pat Arthur’s face. Arthur slapped his hand away and they swerved violently.

“Fuck,” Arthur said, with less force than the situation merited. He suspected he had been desensitised to such near misses. Upon braving the cup holder again, he discovered the sticky object to be a couple of ancient gummy bears fused into a dusty blob, which he held up in horrified fascination. A couple of the cans on the floor rolled as the road curved, and he realised they were mostly energy drinks. “How have you not died of a heart attack yet?”

“Unkillable, baby,” Merlin said, looking over with a quick grin.

“Like a cockroach,” Arthur agreed, and Merlin laughed.

He rifled through the tape collection with mild interest. Mostly, he was thinking about how even almost dying in a car with Merlin was easy. He liked his uni friends, he really did, but somehow it was never quite like this, all insults and a comfort born of seven years of winding each other up. He felt more himself than he had for weeks.

Picking a new tape at random, he stabbed at the eject button until the car reluctantly relinquished the old one and shoved it in. The music hissed to life and he rolled down the window a little, letting the cold December air whirl through the car.

* * *

The car rolled to a stop just about inside the white lines. The rest of the little car park was thankfully and understandably empty on a day like this, with the few scraps of rubbish blowing about the only signs of life. Arthur stared ahead. Only Merlin. Only Merlin would make such a mystery out of bringing them to the most depressing stretch of English beach he had ever seen.

The sky was still grey, edging closer to a downpour by the second. It had sucked all the colour from the water, choppy and icy-looking even from here. The beach was one of those unfortunate English ones that was mostly stones, designed to associate the memory of summer with that of stabbing pains in the soles of your feet. It was a less than appealing scene, it had to be said.

He turned slowly to Merlin, who was beaming. “We kept saying we would go to the beach!”

Arthur stared some more. “We did,” he agreed. “In summer,” he emphasised. “It’s December.”

“The beach has no season.”

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, come on,” Merlin said, already half out of the car.

Not for the first time, Arthur cursed his instinct to follow Merlin wherever the hell he was going, and opened his own door. The wind slammed it shut before he had the chance to do it himself, and he fought a shiver as the freezing wind rolled off the waves and into all the exposed skin it could find. He pulled his jacket tighter, cheeks already stinging. He jammed his hands into his pockets, shaking his head. He couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, the sound lifted away on the wind along with another few precious degrees of body heat.

Merlin was waiting where the path dropped away a few feet above the sand, arms out in a Titanic-like pose, thin hoodie flapping in the wind. His hair was blowing forward into his face and he grinned at Arthur, who decided he might as well take his chance and hug him properly, fitting his arms around his waist. Merlin laughed in his ear, and Arthur pulled back to punch him lightly.

“You’re a nutter, Emrys, you know that?” he said, but Merlin was not to be dissuaded from jumping down onto the sand with a rattle of stones, almost falling flat on his face. Arthur followed more carefully, kicking stones as he followed him towards the warer.

With little else to do, the activity of the day revealed itself to be picking up increasingly large rocks and launching them into the water, rating by the size of the splash and how good the sound was. Arthur was winning. He pried a brick-sized one up from the damp sand, and chucked it as hard as he could. It disappeared into the waves with a satisfying plonk, soon drowned by the sound of the wind.

“Beat that,” he said cheerfully, brushing sand from his palm. Merlin was already looking for his next projectile, dislodging a fist-sized round one with a ‘watch this’ kind of look.

He raised it almost to his face like a bowling ball, then pulled back and went for what was very nearly a spectacular underarm throw, only for the fact he let it go too late and it shot into the air almost vertically. Down it came, entirely too close to where they were standing, and Arthur jumped back with a curse as it landed heavily in the sand with almost no sound at all.

“Trying to kill us?” Arthur asked.

“The wind,” Merlin said defensively. Arthur snorted, then shivered as a particularly vicious gust of wind seemed to cut through him. Merlin’s nose was already red, and he couldn’t quite hide how freezing he was, hopping from foot to foot and rubbing his arms.

“I can’t feel my face, come on,” Arthur said, already walking backwards hopefully. Merlin pouted but gave in and followed. Arthur reached the car first, pulling on the handle impatiently before remembering that the car didn’t look like it could take such treatment. He bounced up and down for heat. “Anytime today,” he called.

Merlin glared and jangled the keys pointedly before manually putting the key in the lock. The car wasn’t quite old enough not to even have an electronic lock, so Arthur supposed it was just another thing that was broken. It clicked and he yanked the door open against the wind, sliding in gratefully and letting it slam behind him as Merlin did the same.

It was blissfully silent in the car, and he let his head fall back against the headrest, breathing out a half-laugh in relief. He turned to Merlin, who was watching him with a crooked little smile, eyes crinkled and nose still red from the cold, and something just rushed into him like the tide and washed away all his good reasons and his fear, and he knew if he didn’t do it now he would regret it for the rest of his life.

So he did. He leaned in, right hand braced awkwardly on the back of Merlin’s seat, and pressed his lips to his before he could think better of it. It was uncomfortable and uncoordinated, the centre console digging into his thigh and their noses bumping together for a second before he corrected. Merlin’s face was freezing, but even a chaste few moments of pressure made Arthur feel like his own was on fire.

His left hand drifted up to Merlin’s neck, and Merlin made a surprised sound and grabbed his collar, pulling him forward, hard. Arthur overbalanced, smashing his mouth against Merlin’s teeth in the process. He shot back, wincing.

“Fuck,” he muttered, raising a hand to his lips. He held it out in front of him to see if he really had split it. It certainly felt that way. He looked up. Merlin was staring, his own lips a little pink.

“Your –” Merlin started. He cleared his throat, looking dazed. “Your hands are bloody freezing.”

Arthur felt his heartbeat speed up as the weight of what he had done caught up to him. He looked back at his fingers. His hand felt distinctly like it did not belong to him. “Oh, Christ, what am I doing?” he said, fingers returning to his lip, which was really throbbing now. “I’m – I’m so- ” he stuttered, stomach churning, heart pounding. He had ruined everything.

Merlin reached up past his hand, cool fingers landing lightly on his jawline. Arthur swallowed and looked away. Merlin’s thumb brushed lightly against his lip and his eyes snapped back. Merlin smiled at him.

“Don’t be such a baby, Pendragon.”

Arthur stared at him, helpless, brain still blaring the alarms.

“You’re not bleeding,” Merlin said gently. “No harm done.” As though that was the problem, the part of the equation that was sending Arthur closer to a panic attack by the second. Merlin seemed to realise that meaning was not making it through the panic barricades. “So you can come back here,” he said, more slowly, looking intently at Arthur, whose brain was starting to allow both words and their meanings through at a similar time again.

“I –” His voice cracked. “You really…?”

“Did the part where I almost concussed us not give you a hint? Christ, did I actually concuss you? Because –” He paused, absorbing the lingering panic in Arthur’s eyes. “Yeah. I really,” he said seriously. “Idiot.”

Arthur felt like he was moving through water, like he had fallen into the icy sea and never surfaced. He was afraid to look away from Merlin’s eyes and the strangely serious look in them. He leaned in again, body moving almost of its own will, and even with the lingering ache of the earlier collision, their lips slotted together perfectly this time. He wasn’t sure he was breathing.

He let his lips fall apart and felt Merlin do the same, and time started to slip away. He pulled back, dizzy and eyes on Merlin’s spit-shiny lips.

“You really… Did you always…” He seemed to have lost the ability to form full sentences. A small sacrifice, in the grand scheme of things. He forced himself to meet Merlin’s eyes, wide and stormy in the grey light. Rain was falling gently on the car now. He had been right.

Merlin sat back a little and shrugged. “Not always,” he said. “We were just…”

“Us,” Arthur finished.

“Yeah.” Merlin picked at his jeans, uncharacteristically indirect. “But it’s –” He paused. “It’s not really like this, with anyone else. Is it?” he added uncertainly, making an aborted little gesture and looking at Arthur.

“Like what?”

He shrugged again. “Easy.”

“Nothing about you is easy,” Arthur said automatically, startling a snort from Merlin.

“You like it,” Merlin said, tone still a little unsure. “Keeps you on your –”

“Yeah,” Arthur interrupted. “Yeah, I do.”

Their eyes met, and Arthur wasn’t sure what he was looking for, if he expected to see something new there, or something deeper. All he saw was his best friend, same as always, except this time he let his gaze drop to his lips with the usual thrill of want and none of (well, less of) the fear and shame.

“My eyes are up –” Merlin said drily before Arthur cut him off with another kiss, getting to the good part much more quickly this time. He didn’t really know what he was doing, having spent several prime making-out years hung up on the person he was now, somehow, making out with, but Merlin didn’t seem to have any complaints.

Lingering doubts about Merlin’s feelings on the matter melted away as the kisses deepened and Merlin tried to migrate onto his lap as the rain started to batter the car. The yellow piece of shit was simply not equipped for lap-sitting, and Merlin ended up awkwardly splayed across the front seats, cursing against Arthur’s mouth as he got stuck. He shifted impatiently and the car filled with the sound of static. Arthur winced.

“Bastard,” Merlin said, panting and groping for the radio tuner knob. “Bastard, bastard, lost my station, haven’t I? Bastard.”

Arthur sat back, one hand on Merlin’s thigh, and watched as he twisted around, frowning and trying and failing to fix it. Eventually, he just shut it off again and turned back around. He clicked his fingers suddenly. “Back seat!” Merlin said triumphantly.

“What kind of American teen movie do you think you’re living, exactly?” Arthur said, amused. “This is a very low budget make-out point scene, for the record.”

Merlin made a face at him and started climbing into the backseat, kneeing Arthur in the shoulder as he went. He flopped down and looked at him expectantly.

“I’m literally not doing that, I’ll get trapped in this piece of shit forever.”

“Fucking really?”

“Really.”

Merlin groaned and muttered something unflattering about the freshers fifteen Arthur must have put on. “You know there’s no back doors on this luxury vehicle, right?” Arthur started laughing.

“Fuck _off_. God, you’re a nightmare,” Merlin grunted as he climbed back into the front. He banged his elbow on the steering wheel and ignored it, getting out and gesturing impatiently. “Well, come on, princess, I have a teen movie fantasy to fulfil.”

Arthur’s lips twitched. He got out and made his way around to where Merlin was having a vicious and muttered argument with the front seat in the rain, pulling and hauling and pleading. “Come on, come on.” Something clicked and the back of the seat went forward. “Ha!” he said triumphantly, turning around to Arthur, rain dripping down his hair into his eyes. “Your carriage awaits.”

Unfortunately, now that Arthur had given into his ever-present urge to kiss Merlin once, and with great success, it was becoming much harder to resist. The seat slammed back into its original position as he pushed Merlin up against the car and did it again.

“Mmf- Get in the car, dickhead, I’m soaking.”

Arthur just leaned back, grinning, not even feeling the rain as it gradually seeped through his hair. He let Merlin fix the seat again, muttering darkly, and climbed into the back seat in a thoroughly ungraceful manner, sweeping a McDonald’s bag and a uni folder onto the floor as he went.

Merlin joined him in his usual inconvenient way, banging his head on the light but settling down on Arthur’s lap properly and diving back in where he’d left off. Arthur quickly forgot any complaints he might’ve had about the arrangement, leaning his head back against the window and looking up at Merlin during a quick breather.

“Missed you,” he said, as if it was big enough for the feeling in his chest, the idea that he might really get to have this.

“You too,” Merlin said easily, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He laid a hand gently on Arthur’s chest and Arthur reached for it awkwardly and curled his own around it, unable to wipe the dopey smile from his face. Merlin shifted a little. “So can we –”

“God, yes.”

Arthur might have been stupidly in love, but he was also a sexually frustrated nineteen year old boy.

The window was cold against the back of his head and Merlin was warm on top of him, tongue darting past his lips, and his head was spinning. He reached up under the bottom of Merlin’s hoodie and let a hand rest against the smooth skin of his back, warm again already. Merlin pulled back from a sloppy kiss and pressed one to the underside of Arthur’s jaw, mouthing down his neck.

Arthur let his eyes fall open again and laughed. Merlin jerked back, offended. “What?”

Arthur pointed. All the glass in the car was thoroughly steamed up. “There’s that movie cliché you were looking for,” he said, and Merlin rolled his eyes and made to move back in, but Arthur turned just enough to get in his way. Reaching awkwardly over his own shoulder, he drew a very wonky ‘AP + ME’ in the condensation, enclosed in an even wonkier heart. “Not quite a tree trunk, but it’ll do,” he said, risking a look back at Merlin, who was watching him with fond exasperation.

“So close,” Merlin said sadly, reaching past him to wipe out the ‘AP’ and re-add it after his own initials, running over the lines of the heart.

“Hey,” Arthur protested, twisting to see what he was doing. “Prick. It was alphabetical.”

“Who does it by first name, come on,” Merlin said with a grin. “You sap,” he added, before grinding down on Arthur’s lap experimentally and receiving a gasp for his trouble. The grin widened. Arthur’s jeans had already been feeling a little tight, and now Merlin started to reach for his waistband in question. He was stopped.

“I am not,” Arthur said with as much dignity as he could manage, “Having sex in this monstrosity. Not happening.”

Merlin held a hand to his chest, offended. “Apologise to Betsy right now.”

“I’m sorry, Betsy, that I taught him to drive, and that you were kept from achieving your final peace on a scrapheap.”

Merlin slapped him, and he hit his head off the window jerking away from it. He flicked him back, and the situation quickly devolved into something on the edge of either a fight or a renewed effort to get into Arthur’s jeans. He stopped Merlin’s wrist again, breathless.

“I have a double bed at home, you know,” he said.

Merlin paused. “I have an idea.”

“Is it going home?”

“Might be.”

“What a good idea, where’d you get it from?”

“I surprise even myself sometimes,” Merlin said, kissing Arthur once more before launching himself back into the front seat, shaking the car.

* * *

The car slowed to a stop outside Arthur’s house. Merlin looked meaningfully at a space just facing it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Arthur said. “This thing is like a toy car, you could get a bus in there. How did you ever get your test?”

A spark of challenge flared in Merlin’s eyes and he leaned in close until Arthur could feel his breath on his ear as he whispered like a secret, “Maybe it’s just hot when you do it.”

Arthur closed his eyes briefly. He had fought long and hard (ha) to get rid of his beach hard-on. He wasn’t about to be done in by this. He wasn’t.

“Fuck off, you just can’t do it,” he said, shoving Merlin back to his side of the car.

Merlin laughed and sat back comfortably in the pose of someone willing to wait for the outcome they wanted. “Things can have more than one reason.”

Arthur, feeling bold, let his hand rest on Merlin’s thigh, pitching his own voice a little lower and looking up at him. Two could play at that game. “Maybe you were just lacking the proper motivation,” he said, letting his gaze flicker down.

“Oh, fuck you,” Merlin said, voice a little tight. “Come on.”

Arthur grinned and leaned in to kiss him. “I’ll see you inside,” he said, undoing his seatbelt and opening the door before Merlin regained the sense to lock it.

“Oh, don’t be a dick, come on,” Merlin shouted as he shut the door.

Arthur smiled as he walked to the front door. He knew Merlin would be right behind him. Eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> ayy hope you enjoyed, please let me know if you liked it and check out my other fics if you're interested!
> 
> thanks for reading! <3
> 
> my [tumblr](https://idlestories.tumblr.com/) is here if you'd like to follow me there


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